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Perth Wildcats vs Brisbane Bullets |
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|---|---|---|
2016/17 NBL Season, 1 December 2016 |
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| Perth Arena, Perth, WA | ||
| Perth Wildcats | Brisbane Bullets | |
| 75 | SCORE | 90 |
| 18 | Q1 | 28 |
| 11 | Q2 | 21 |
| 25 | Q3 | 16 |
| 21 | Q4 | 25 |
Jermaine Beal makes his first trip back to The Jungle when his Brisbane Bullets face the undermanned but high-flying Perth Wildcats to get Round 9 of the NBL season underway. Join The Roar for live scores and coverage from 9:30pm (AEDT).
Both the Wildcats and Bullets are sitting near the top of the table which while positive doesn’t give either club much breathing space with only a few games separating the whole table.
Interestingly, the sides hold exactly the same record of 6-5 at this point and this game could help to split the top of the table a little big.
For Perth, they are still adjusting to playing week in and week out with no Damian Martin on the floor, who continues to recover from injury, the expected return date being January.
Without him, others have had to step up in their defensive exploits which they seemed to be doing quite consistently, until they ran into the Illawarra Hawks who beat them at the Perth Arena last week for the first time in over a decade.
With no Martin though, it has forced Casey Prather to run the offence and what a job he has done, elevating himself to MVP status with some incredible attacking basketball. Simply put, if Brisbane can’t find a way to shut him down the game will skip away from them very quickly.
On the other hand though, Brisbane started the season with a win against the Wildcats but even from that match it was obvious there were problems with their offence.
That has started to click and become cohesive as a unit in the last few weeks though, with Torrey Craig leading the charge with his athleticism and drive to get every lose ball.
Daniel Kickert, while still refusing to shoot the three ball is starting to come into his own and when Cameron Bairstow plays somewhere near his potential they look like a complete team.
The key to Brisbane’s stuttering offence though is Jermaine Beal. While he isn’t shooting as he was last year, he still has the ability to knock down some clutch buckets, and must do so while also sharing the orange is the Bullets are to pull a win out of the hat on the toughest road trip in the NBL.
Prediction
At home, the Wildcats are always hard to tip against but the Bullets, coming off a loss will be fired up and before that loss had seemed to be hitting a much better output on offence.
If they can get that right, their defence did enough in Round 1 and should do enough here to restrict the Wildcats scoring.
It will be low scoring, but the Bullets could cause quite the upset here. Don’t be surprised if we get some overtime either.
Bullets by 4.
Be sure to join The Roar for live scores and coverage of this all-important Round 9 clash from 9:30pm (AEDT) and don’t forget to add a comment in the section below.
Follow Scott on Twitter @sk_pryde